We sing that we are now waging our last and decisive battle — that, for example, is one of the most widespread slogans, constantly repeated by us. But I am afraid that if the majority of Communists were asked: against whom are you now waging — not the last, of course, that is a bit too much said, but one of our last and decisive battles — then I fear that few would give the correct answer to this question and reveal a clear understanding of what or whom we are now waging one of our last and decisive battles against. And it seems to me that this spring, in connection with those political events which have attracted the attention of the broad masses of workers and peasants, it is necessary, I think, in connection with these events, once again to examine from the beginning, or at least to attempt to examine, the question of whom we are waging this spring, right now, one of our last and decisive battles against. Allow me to dwell on this question.

In order to understand this question, I think we must first of all, as accurately and soberly as possible, once again survey the forces that stand opposed to each other and whose struggle determines both the fate of Soviet power and, generally speaking, the course and development of the proletarian revolution, the revolution for the overthrow of capital both in Russia and in other countries. What are these forces? How are they grouped against each other? What is the disposition of these forces at the present time? Every serious political aggravation, every new, even if not very major, turn of political events, should always lead every thinking worker and every thinking peasant to this question, to the question of what forces are present, how they are grouped. And only when we are able to correctly and completely soberly, regardless of our sympathies and desires, to assess these forces, only then will we be able to draw correct conclusions regarding our policy in general and our immediate tasks. And so, allow me now to briefly describe these forces.

These forces are, in the main, general and fundamental — three. I will begin with the one closest to us, I will begin with the proletariat. This is the first force. This is the first distinct class. You all know this well, you yourselves live in the thick of this class. What is its position now? In the Soviet Republic, this is the class that took power three and a half years ago and which during this time has exercised rule, dictatorship, which more than all other classes during these three and a half years has suffered, endured, become exhausted, and experienced deprivation and calamity. These three and a half years, most of which were spent in a desperate civil war of Soviet power against the entire capitalist world, meant for the working class, for the proletariat, such calamities, such deprivations, such sacrifices, such an aggravation of every kind of need as never before in the world. And a strange thing resulted. The class that took political rule into its own hands took it, realizing that it was taking it alone. This is contained in the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This concept only makes sense when one class knows that it alone takes political power into its hands and does not deceive either itself or others with talk about "all-people's, universally elected, by the whole people sanctified" power. Lovers of that kind of verbiage, as you all know very well, are very numerous and even superabundant, but in any case, not from among the proletariat, for the proletarians have realized and written in the Constitution, in the fundamental laws of the republic, that it is a question of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This class understood that it was taking power alone under exceptionally difficult conditions. It exercised it in the way every dictatorship is exercised, i.e., with the greatest firmness, with the greatest inflexibility it exercised its political rule. And at the same time, during these three and a half years of political rule, it was subjected to such calamities, deprivations, hunger, deterioration of its economic position as never before any class in history. And it is understandable that, as a result of such superhuman strain, we now have a particular

fatigue and exhaustion and a particular nervousness of this class.

How could it happen that in a country where the proletariat is so small in number compared to the rest of the population, in a backward country which was artificially cut off by military force from countries with a more numerous, conscious, disciplined and organized proletariat — how could it happen that in such a country, despite the resistance, the onslaught of the bourgeoisie of the whole world, one class could exercise its power? How could this be carried out for three and a half years? Where was the support for this? We know that the support was inside the country, among the mass of peasants. I will now turn to this second force, but first we must finish the analysis of the first force. I said, and every one of you has observed in the life of your closest comrades in the factories, plants, depots, workshops and knows, that never was the calamity of this class so great and acute as in the epoch of its dictatorship. Never had the country reached such fatigue, such wear and tear, as now. What gave this class the moral strength to endure these deprivations? It is clear, completely obvious, that from somewhere it must have drawn moral strength to overcome these material deprivations. The question of moral strength, of moral support, as you know, is an indefinite question; anything can be understood by moral strength and anything can be slipped in there. To avoid this danger — of slipping something indefinite or fantastic under this concept of moral strength — I ask myself, is it possible to find signs of a precise definition of what gave the proletariat the moral strength to endure the unprecedented material deprivations connected with its political rule? I think that if we put the question this way, a precise answer can be found. Ask yourselves, could the Soviet Republic have endured what it has endured for three and a half years, and so successfully defended itself against the onslaught of the White Guards, supported by the capitalists of all countries of the world, if alongside it there had been backward, and not advanced,

countries? It is enough to ask this question for there to be no hesitation in the answer.

You know that for three and a half years all the richest powers of the world fought against us. The military force that stood against us and supported Kolchak, Yudenich, Denikin and Wrangel — you know perfectly well, every one of you took part in the war — was many times, immeasurably and absolutely greater than our military forces. You know perfectly well that the might of all these states is immeasurably greater than ours even now. How then could it happen that they set themselves the task of defeating Soviet power and did not defeat it? How could this be? We have a precise answer. This could be and this happened because the proletariat in all capitalist countries was for us. Even in those cases when it was admittedly under the influence of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries — in European countries they are called differently — it nevertheless did not support the struggle against us. In the end, under the forced concessions to the masses by the leaders, the workers wrecked this war. It was not we who won, for our military forces are insignificant, but what won was that the powers could not bring their entire military force into action against us. The workers of the advanced countries determine the course of war to such an extent that war cannot be waged against their will, and in the final analysis they wrecked the war against us by passive and semi-passive resistance. This indisputable fact precisely answers the question of where the Russian proletariat could find the moral strength to hold out for three and a half years and win. The moral strength of the Russian worker was that he knew, felt, sensed the help, the support in this struggle which was given to him by the proletariat of all the advanced countries of Europe. The direction in which the working-class movement is developing there is shown to us by the fact that recently in Europe there have been no greater events in the working-class movement than the split of the socialist parties in England, France, Italy and other countries, both defeated and victorious, in countries with different cultures, with different degrees of economic development. In all countries, the main

event of this year was that from the shattered, completely collapsed parties of the socialists and social-democrats, in Russian — the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, a party of Communists was formed, relying on the support of everything that is advanced in the working class. And, of course, there is no doubt that if backward countries, in which there are no such powerful proletarian masses, had fought against us instead of the advanced countries, we would not have held out not only for three and a half years, but even for three and a half months. Could our proletariat have had moral strength if it had not relied on the sympathy of the workers of the advanced countries, who supported us, despite the lies which the imperialists spread in millions of copies about Soviet power, despite the efforts of the "workers' leaders," the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who had to wreck and did wreck the workers' struggle for us. Relying on this support, our proletariat, weak in its small numbers, exhausted by calamities and deprivations, won, because it is strong in its moral strength.

There you have the first force.

The second force is that which stands between developed capital and the proletariat. This is the petty bourgeoisie, the small proprietors, that which in Russia constitutes the overwhelming majority of the population — the peasantry. Mainly these are small proprietors and small-scale agriculture. Nine-tenths of them are such and cannot be otherwise. They do not participate daily in the acute struggle between capital and labor, they have not been through school, the economic and political conditions of life do not bring them together, but separate them, push them apart from one another, turn them into millions of small proprietors each on their own. Such are the facts, which you all know perfectly well. No collectives, collective farms, communes can change this before a long, long series of years. With its enemies on the right, with the class of landowners, this force, thanks to the revolutionary energy and selflessness of the proletarian dictatorship, finished so quickly as never before, swept it away completely, eliminated its rule with unprecedented speed. But, the sooner it eliminated its rule,

the sooner it passed to its own farming on the nationalized land, the more decisively it dealt with the small minority of kulaks, the sooner it itself turned into small proprietors. You know that the Russian village has become leveled out during this time. The proportion of large sowers and the landless has decreased, the middle peasant economy has increased. Our village has become more petty-bourgeois during this time. This is an independent class, that class which, after the destruction, the expulsion of the landowners and capitalists, remains the only class capable of opposing the proletariat. And therefore it is absurd to write on posters that the kingdom of workers and peasants will have no end.

You know what this force is like from the point of view of its political mood. This is a force of vacillation. We have seen this in our revolution in all parts of the country — in Russia in its own way, in Siberia in its own way, in the Ukraine in its own way, but everywhere the result was the same: this is a force of vacillation. For a long time it was led on leading strings by the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, both with the help of Kerensky, and in the period of Kolchak, and when there was the Constituent Assembly in Samara, and when the Menshevik Maisky was minister under Kolchak or his predecessors, etc. This force vacillated between the leadership of the proletariat and the leadership of the bourgeoisie. Why did this force, in its vast majority, not lead itself? Because the economic conditions of life of this mass are such that it cannot unite itself, cannot consolidate itself. This is clear to anyone who does not let himself be dominated by empty words about "universal suffrage," about the Constituent Assembly and similar "democracy," which fooled the people for hundreds of years in all countries, and here the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks practiced it for hundreds of weeks, "each time on this very spot" suffering failure. (Applause.) We know from our own experience — and we see confirmation of this in the development of all revolutions, if we take the new epoch, say, one hundred and fifty years, throughout the world — that everywhere and always the result was exactly this: all attempts of the petty bourgeoisie in general, the peasantry in particular, to realize their own strength, to direct in their own way

the economy and politics ended in collapse. Either under the leadership of the proletariat, or under the leadership of the capitalists — there is no middle course. All who dream of it are empty dreamers, fantasists. They are refuted by politics, economics and history. The whole teaching of Marx shows that once we assume the small proprietor as owner of the means of production and the land, then from exchange between them capital necessarily grows, and with it the contradictions between capital and labor. The struggle of capital with the proletariat is an inevitability, it is a law that has shown itself throughout the world, and whoever does not want to deceive himself cannot fail to see this.

From these basic economic facts follows why this force cannot manifest itself and why attempts to do so in the history of all revolutions have always ended in collapse. Insofar as the proletariat fails to lead the revolution, this force always comes under the leadership of the bourgeoisie. This was the case in all revolutions, and, of course, the Russian people are not anointed with a special chrism, and if they wish to climb into sainthood, nothing but the ridiculous will come of it. Of course, history treats us just as it treats others. For all of us this is particularly clear because we all lived through the Kerensky period. At that time, there were a hundred times more leaders of the political line, intelligent, educated, with great experience in politics and in state administration, to support the government, than there were Bolsheviks. If we count all the officials who sabotaged us and who did not set themselves the task of sabotaging the Kerensky government, which relied on the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, they were an enormous majority. And yet it suffered collapse. That means there were reasons which outweighed the enormous preponderance of intellectual, educated forces, accustomed to governing the state, who had mastered this art for decades before they had to take state power into their own hands. This experience was repeated in other variants in the Ukraine, the Don, the Kuban, and all came to the same result. There can be no accidents here. Such is the economic and political

law of the second force: either under the leadership of the proletariat — a difficult path, but one which can lead out from under the rule of the landowners and capitalists — or under the leadership of the capitalists, as in the advanced democratic republics, even in America, where the free distribution of land is not yet quite finished (60 desyatins were given free to every newcomer; one could not imagine better conditions!) and where this led to the complete domination of capital.

There you have the second force.

With us, this second force is vacillating, it is particularly tired. The burdens of the revolution fall upon it, and in recent years they have been falling more and more: a year of crop failure, the fulfillment of the grain requisitioning in connection with the loss of livestock, fodder shortage, etc. In such a situation, it is understandable that this second force, the mass of the peasantry, gave way to despair. It could not think of improving its position, despite the fact that three and a half years had passed since the destruction of the landowners, and improvement is becoming necessary. The demobilized army does not meet with the possibility of finding proper application for its labor. And there you have the transformation of this petty-bourgeois force into an anarchic element, which expresses its demands in unrest.

The third force is known to all, it is the landowners and capitalists. At present we do not see this force. But here is one of the particularly important events, one particularly important lesson of the last weeks — the Kronstadt events appeared like a lightning flash which illuminated reality more brightly than anything else.

Now there is no country in Europe where there is no White Guard element. Russian emigrants are estimated at up to seven hundred thousand people. These are the escaped capitalists and that mass of employees who could not adapt to Soviet power. We do not see this third force, it has gone abroad, but it lives and acts in alliance with the capitalists of the whole world, who support it just as they supported Kolchak, Yudenich, Wrangel, support it with financing, support it by other

means, because they have their international connection. Everyone remembers these people. In the last few days, you have of course noticed the abundance in the newspapers of quotations, extracts from the White Guard press with explanations of the events in Kronstadt. In recent days these events were described by Burtsev, who publishes a newspaper in Paris, they were assessed by Milyukov — you have of course all read this. Why did our newspapers devote so much attention to this? Is this correct? It is correct. Because one must clearly know one's enemy. He is not so visible when he has gone abroad, but look — he has not moved very far, at most a few thousand versts, and having moved that distance, he has hidden himself. He is intact, he is alive, he is waiting. That is why we must keep an eye on him, especially since these are not only refugees. No, these are direct helpers of world capital, maintained at its expense and acting together with it.

You have of course all noticed how the quotations from the White Guard newspapers published abroad went side by side with quotations from the newspapers of France and England. This is one chorus, one orchestra. True, in such orchestras there is not one conductor playing the piece from the score. There, international capital conducts in a way less noticeable than a conductor's baton, but that it is one orchestra — this should be clear to you from any quotation. They admitted that if the slogan becomes "Soviet power without the Bolsheviks" — we agree. And Milyukov explains this particularly clearly. He studied history attentively and renewed all his knowledge by studying Russian history on his own hide. He supplemented the result of his twenty years of professorial study with twenty months of personal study. He declares that if the slogan becomes Soviet power without the Bolsheviks, I am for it. Whether this will be a shift a little to the right or a little to the left towards the anarchists, abroad, in Paris, this is not visible. There they do not see what is happening in Kronstadt, but he says: "gentlemen monarchists, do not hurry, do not interfere by shouting about it." And he declares that if the shift is

to the left, I am ready to be for Soviet power against the Bolsheviks.

This is what Milyukov writes and which is absolutely correct. He has learned something from Russian history and from the landowners and capitalists, asserting that all the same the Kronstadt events represent an attempt to create Soviet power without the Bolsheviks; a little to the right, a little with free trade; a little with the Constituent Assembly. Listen to any Menshevik, and you will hear all this, perhaps even without leaving this hall. (Applause.) If the slogan of the Kronstadt events is a deviation a little to the left — Soviet power with the anarchists, generated by calamities, war, demobilization of the army — then why is Milyukov for it? Because he knows that the deviation can be either towards the proletarian dictatorship or towards the capitalists.

Otherwise political power could not exist. Although we are waging not the last, but one of the last and decisive battles, the only correct answer to the question: with whom are we waging today one of the decisive battles, is: with the petty-bourgeois element at home. (Applause.) As for the landowners and capitalists, we defeated them in the first campaign, but only the first, and the second will be on an international scale. Modern capitalism, even if it were a hundred times stronger, cannot wage war against us because there, in the advanced countries, the workers wrecked its war yesterday and will wreck it today even better, even more surely, because there the consequences of the war are unfolding more and more. The petty-bourgeois element at home we have defeated, but it will still show itself, and this is taken into account by the landowners and capitalists, especially those who are cleverer, like Milyukov, who said to the monarchists: sit quietly, keep silent, because otherwise you will only strengthen Soviet power. This was shown by the general course of revolutions, in which there have been short-lived dictatorships of the working people, temporarily supported by the countryside, but there has been no consolidated power of the working people; everything in a short time rolled back.

It rolled back precisely because the peasants, the working people, the small proprietors cannot have their own policy, and after a series of vacillations they have to go back. This was the case in the great French Revolution, this was the case on a smaller scale in all revolutions. And it is understandable that everyone has learned this lesson. Our White Guards moved across the border, moved away a three days' journey and sit there and lie in wait, having support and backing from West European capital. Such is the situation. From this the tasks and duty of the proletariat are clear.

On the soil of fatigue and exhaustion a certain mood is born, and sometimes despair. As always, among the revolutionary elements this mood and despair is expressed in anarchism. This was the case in all capitalist countries, and this is happening with us. The petty-bourgeois element is going through a crisis, because the last years have been hard on it, although not as hard as the year 1919 was for the proletariat, but still hard. The peasantry had to save the state, to accept the grain requisitioning without compensation, but it can no longer endure such a strain, and therefore there is confusion of spirit, vacillation, wavering, and this is taken into account by the enemy-capitalist, who says: just give it a shake, a wobble, and then it will roll. That is what the Kronstadt events mean, illuminated from the point of view of the assessment of class forces on an all-Russian and international scale. That is what one of the last and decisive battles which we are waging means, because we have not defeated this petty-bourgeois-anarchic element and the immediate fate of the revolution now depends on victory over it. If we do not defeat it, we will roll back, like the French Revolution. This is inevitable, and we must look at it, not clouding our eyes and not excusing ourselves with phrases. We must do everything possible to alleviate the position of this mass and preserve proletarian leadership, and then the growing movement of communist revolution in Europe will receive new reinforcement. What did not happen there today may happen tomorrow, what did not happen tomorrow may

happen the day after tomorrow, but such periods as tomorrow and the day after tomorrow in world history mean no less than several years.

This is my answer to the question of what we are now fighting for and waging one of our last and decisive battles, what is the meaning of the latest events, what is the meaning of the class struggle in Russia. Now it is clear why this struggle has become so acute, why it is so difficult for us to come to understand that the main enemy is not Yudenich, Kolchak or Denikin, but our own situation, our own environment.

Here I can pass to the concluding part of my too protracted speech, to the situation of railway and water transport and to the tasks of the congress of railwaymen and water transport workers. I think that what I have had to outline here is most closely and inseparably connected with these tasks. There is hardly another part of the proletariat which enters so clearly through its daily economic activity into connection with industry and agriculture as the railwaymen and water transport workers. You must supply the towns with products, you must revive the countryside by means of transport with industrial products. This is clear to everyone, and to the railway and water transport workers it is clearer than to others, because this constitutes the object of their daily labor. And from this, it seems to me, it follows of itself what exceptionally important tasks, what responsibility falls at the present moment on the working people of railway and water transport.

You all know that your congress has assembled under conditions when there were frictions between the top and bottom levels of the union. When this question was brought up at the last Party congress, such decisions were adopted to harmonize the top and bottom, by subordinating the top to the bottom, by correcting particular, in my opinion, but in any case, requiring correction, mistakes which were made by the top. You know that these corrections were made at the Party congress, that this congress concluded its work with greater cohesion

and greater unity in the ranks of the Communist Party than before. This is a legitimate, necessary and the only correct answer of the vanguard, i.e., the leading part of the proletariat, to the movement of the petty-bourgeois-anarchic element. If we, the conscious workers, understand the danger of this movement, close ranks, work ten times more amicably, a hundred times more cohesively, then this will increase our strength tenfold, and then we, after victory over the military onslaught, will also achieve victory over the vacillations, waverings of this element, which stirs up all our daily life, and therefore, I repeat, is dangerous. The decision of the Party congress, which corrected what was brought to its attention, signifies a major step in the matter of cohesion and unity of the proletarian army. Now it is up to you at your congress to do the same and to put into practice the decision of the Party congress.

I repeat, the fate of the revolution depends more directly on the work of this part of the proletariat than on the rest of it. We need to restore the exchange between agriculture and industry, and to restore it we need a material foundation. What is the material foundation for the connection between industry and agriculture? It is the transport of railways and waterways. That is why you have the duty to take your work particularly seriously, and not only those of you who are members of the Communist Party and therefore conscious vehicles of the proletarian dictatorship, but also those who do not belong to the Party, but who are workers of the trade union uniting a million to a million and a half transport workers. All of you, learning from the lessons of our revolution and all previous revolutions, must understand all the difficulty of the situation we are going through and, without in the least closing your eyes to all sorts of slogans, whether it be about "freedom," about the Constituent Assembly, about "free Soviets" — for it is so easy to repaint labels, as Milyukov has shown himself a supporter of the Soviets of the Kronstadt republic — without closing your eyes to

the correlation of class forces, you will acquire a sober and solid base, a foundation for all your political conclusions. It will become clear to you that we are going through a period of crisis, when it depends on us whether the proletarian revolution will go as steadily towards victory as it has gone recently, or whether vacillations and waverings will cause the victory of the White Guards, which will not change the severity of the situation, but will only push Russia back from the revolution for many decades. For you, representatives of the railwaymen and water transport workers, the conclusion can and must be only one: a hundred times more proletarian cohesion and proletarian discipline. At all costs, comrades, we must achieve this and win victory. (Stormy applause.)

"Pravda" Nos. 67 and 68, March 29 and 30, 1921.

Printed according to the text of the newspaper "Pravda".